1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to digital-cinema processing apparatuses, ingesting methods, and programs.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the progress of digital technology, the environment of cinemas is changing from film to digital. Furthermore, recently, exhibition apparatuses that are capable of digital exhibition, such as digital projectors, are being introduced in many exhibition theaters. That is, the era of digital cinema in a real sense is coming. A digital cinema refers to a cinema that is produced using video equipment instead of a film camera for shooting, or a cinema that is distributed and played without using a film.
In order to produce a digital cinema, in addition to using picture and sound techniques for precisely reproducing image and sound intended by the producer, data is to be produced in a format called a digital cinema package (DCP), conforming to specifications proposed by the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI), established by the seven major US studios. The specifications involve, for example, color space conversion, compression, and encryption for copyright protection. As screen sizes for DCPs, currently, for example, 4 k (4096×2160 pixels) and 2 k (2048×1080 pixels) are defined.
When a digital cinema system that uses such a DCP is formed, a DCP created at a server provided at a cinema distribution company is provided to each theater, and the DCP is played at an exhibition apparatus provided at the theater, whereby the digital cinema is exhibited. At this time, the DCP distributed from the distribution company is ingested in a storage device (e.g., a hard disk drive) of the exhibition apparatus. The term “ingest” herein refers to converting data of a digital cinema created at another apparatus into a data format supported by a recipient apparatus and capturing the data. The “ingest” is similar to “import”, which means capturing of data by an ordinary information processing apparatus.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-355342 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-308252 disclose methods for importing music content recorded on a medium such as an audio compact disk (CD) to a client terminal (PC). However, these documents does not disclose methods for ingesting a DCP of a digital cinema in an exhibition apparatus.